They're children. Tens of thousands of them, boys and girls, some just toddlers, many under 12 years old, who somehow made it here from the violent, gang-filled, homicide-ridden countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Gradually packing detention facilities along the Mexican border, their numbers finally reached a point that all of America not only has noticed but also can hardly talk about anything else.

There are predictably partisan arguments about why this is happening, whom to blame and what to do about it. Here's the bottom line:

The children have arrived claiming to be refugees, and for more than half a century, international law and our own has governed the treatment of refugees seeking asylum. Many of them lack proof that their lives were in danger, and they will have to be deported. But every one of them must receive due process, and every one of them deserves to be treated humanely while in U.S. custody.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose saw a 3-year-old girl last week at a Rio Grande Valley, Texas, holding facility, essentially a jail, running around in only a diaper. Imagine how desperate her parents must have been to send her north. Older children in the same cell care for her, and when they're called out for interviews, they pass her on to others for care.

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Conservatives say that just flying the children home would be 99 percent cheaper than President Barack Obama's $3.7 billion plan to deal with them. Lofgren, an expert on immigration issues, argues they miss a crucial point.

First the U.S. needs to determine whether the children have legitimate claims of asylum due to violence or trafficking. Honduras has the highest homicide rate of any country in the world, and organized crime and gang violence are soaring in El Salvador and Guatemala.

The notion that Obama rolled out a welcome mat for the children is preposterous. He has earned the title deporter-in-chief, expelling record numbers of immigrants, far more than the preceding Bush administration.

And the sudden controversy over the 2008 law signed by George W. Bush to help victims of trafficking is a straw man.

The law was supposed to ensure that children fleeing persecution and trafficking or other forms of severe abuse were not returned to grave danger. That's not the problem. The problem is too few immigration judges to deal with a backlog of more than 375,000 cases, including the flood of some 50,000 children.

Republicans have wanted to fund enforcement but not judges. There are just 243 nationwide. Los Angeles County alone has more than 400 judges on its Superior Court. There's no way the immigration judges can keep up, let alone catch up.

Obama's request for $3.7 billion to deal with the crisis is a good start. It includes $64 million for more judges and $1.8 billion for better living conditions while kids await hearings. In the Rio Grande Valley, Lofgren saw up to dozens of boys and girls crammed into concrete cells with concrete benches. When someone had to use the single toilet, the children held up a blanket for privacy.

Obama also wants $300 million to improve living conditions in Central America, but that requires a regional strategy. The United States has been so distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it's ignored the growing crisis close to home. A long-term, multinational approach like the one that helped restore order in Colombia can do the same for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Refugees from violence are a worldwide challenge. People fleeing wanton slaughter in places like Somalia, Syria and Uganda often end up in nearby countries that are ill-equipped for the influx. But they try.

Surely the United States will meet this hemisphere's crisis in a humane manner befitting its history.